"Religion is for Weak People"

EDITORIAL NOTE: Thank you for your patience, but I've taken an unannounced vacation the last two weeks from blogging due to my pastoral and personal schedule. I'm back now, though, and hope to be submitting daily posts again.

"Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers." (Jesse Ventura, former Governor of Minnesota)

This now famous/infamous line spoken by "The Gov" received much air time from the media in trying to stir the religious debate pot for ratings. Usually following the airing of the comment they'd host panels to discuss the controversial comment and invite religious people, atheists, authors, pastors, etc. in to "discuss" the comment in relation to politics, life and eternity.

While this quote is old news, what it represents is very relevant today still and will be until Christ returns.

Like Ventura, many claim religion is for weak-minded, poor, oppressed, or lonely people. Strong-minded, wealthy, powerful, famous/popular, and/or healthy people, however, have little to no need for God. Why would they? They are the makers of their own destiny. They are their own authorities. They are the authors of their own morals and ethics. They are their own creators (they create their own religions at will). Consequently, they are their own God.

Powerful people need no God (nor do they want one) because they are their own God and for them to answer to a deity higher than them would require an ounce of humility, need and emptiness. Today's culture decries need or brokenness as weakness. The reality of these attributes is that they remind of us of our place (we are not God... we are not all-knowing, all powerful, infinite, holy, eternal or ceaselessly creative) and our need for the infinite God of all.

James 4:7-10 tells us that we will spend our lives doing one of two things: (1) SUBMITTING to God, or (2) trying to BE GOD. Based on the Biblical description of who God is, it is a logical fallacy to think there can be more than one God (or someone equal to Him). Powerful people, though, have no need for this God to save them or aid them (that is, of course, until something happens in their life that leaves them broken beyond words - such as loss of family/friends, tragedy, etc.) and no need to worship God because their attention, drive, motivation, desire and hope is all directed in one direction: themselves.

PARENTS: Do your lives represent one that is bent toward God or bent toward being your own God? One that not only talks about having a need for God to save you, but that demonstrates a lifelong allegiance to this One, True God? Our children and teens find brokenness and need a lot more appealing when they see humility lived out before them.

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